Policy & Practice: Briefing - Voluntary youth grants face restructure

The Government has only just announced the National Voluntary Youth Organisations (NVYO) grants and now it's getting rid? Not so much getting rid as merging the scheme with other grant programmes for voluntary organisations from the Children, Young People and Families Directorate at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The grants from the 2005-08 NVYO scheme were announced in April and the new single grant programme would start in April 2006, but the Government states there is "no expectation" that organisations already funded will need to reapply.

So why does it want to change things? Two reasons. One is to achieve greater "strategic coherence" and the other is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. The DfES believes both aims are consistent with initiatives such as the Compact Code of Good Practice for funding voluntary organisations and the Home Office's Change Up programme.